Promotion building blocks

Explore entities and their roles in the promotion process

Promotion components

If you are new to promotions in GitOps, understanding the key entities involved in the promotion process helps clarify their roles.

Codefresh GitOps promotions rely on:

Core entities that define your deployment lifecycle structure
Promotion-specific entities that enhance control and automation for advanced flows

For an end-to-end guide on continuous delivery with Codefresh GitOps, see Promotions: Setup & configuration guidelines.

Promotion building blocks and roles

A promotion comprises several entities, some optional and some required, that define its behavior.

The table below summarizes the core entities and promotion-specific entities, outlining their roles in the promotion process.

Core entities for promotions

These entities define the structure of your deployment.
They support standard promotion flows, enabling typical deployment scenarios such as promotions between two environments. See our quick starts on promotions.

Entity	Role in promotions	Created by	Learn more
Applications (Required)	The core units of promotions. Each Argo CD application can be promoted individually or as part of a product.	Users with ABAC permissions	Creating applications

Product (Required)	Groups related applications into a single entitysimplifying promotions by allowing batch promotion instead of promoting each application manually.	Users	Products

Environments (Required)	Define where your applications live and promotions occur. Typically, environments mirror your software lifecycle. You need at least two environments: Trigger environment: Where a change starts the promotion, initiated by a manual commit or pull request. Target environments: Where changes are promoted after the trigger environment.	Users	Environments

Promotion-specific entities

These entities provide additional control and automation, enabling advanced multi-environment promotion flows with precise definitions. They allow teams to define what gets promoted, when, and under what conditions.

Entity	Role in promotions	Created by	Learn more
Promotion Flows	Automate and orchestrate the movement of applications through environments within the same product.	Account administrators	Creating Promotion Flows

Promotion Settings	Define what gets promoted across environments. Settings can be inline, exclusive to a product, or reusable across multiple products as as a promotion template.	Users with ABAC permissions	Promotion settings for products
Promotion Workflow	An Argo Workflow which runs tests and validations during promotion for each environment. Promotion Workflows can include smoke tests, rollback mechanisms, database validation checks, performance checks, and more.	Users with ABAC permissions	Promotion Workflows
Promotion Policy	Defines promotion behavior for environments by combining Promotion Workflows (tests and validations), with the promotion action such as commits or pull requests.	Account administrators	Promotion Policies

Promotion entities and GitOps Runtimes

Most promotion-related entities are stored as Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) in the Shared Configuration Repository of the GitOps Runtime designated as the Configuration Runtime. If you have multiple Configuration Runtimes, Codefresh consolidates the settings into a single set of promotion manifests.

NOTE
The documentation uses Shared Configuration Repository or Shared Config Repo for clarity.
Code samples and internal references use isc.

Entity	Location	Token
Environments	N/A	None
Product	`isc/resources/configuration/products`	Git user token
Applications	Git Source associated with Runtime	Git user token
Promotion Flow	`isc/configuration/promotion-flows`	Git user token
Promotion Policy	`isc/configuration/promotion-policies`	Git user token
Promotion Workflows	`isc/resources/control-planes/promotion-workflows`	Git user token
Promotion Template	`isc/configuration/promotion-templates`	N/A

About promotions
Promotions: Setup & configuration guidelines
Triggering promotions
Tracking product releases